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The Position of Women in the Vedic Ritual /
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Vedas are the sacred scriptures of the Hindus for performing rituals and other religious functions. Participation and role of women in the Vedic age is a matter of debate and discussion. Women participation in Vedic rituals such as upanayana, sraddha, agni-sanskara, etc. The role of a wife and daughter, domestic rituals, and widows in Vedic rituals and other practices in which women participated is reflected through Vedic literature. This book reconstructs the role of women from Vedic canonical literature, Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aryankas, Upanishads, and later Sanskrit literature such as Puranas, Epics, Smritis, etc. The author also consulted Vedic and other Sanskrit canon manuscripts obtained from Indian and UK libraries. Highly recommended for those who are interested in the gender and religious history of ancient India.
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1 online resource (288 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004752252
Purity and Holiness : The Heritage of Leviticus /
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Purity has long been recognized as one of the essential drives which determines humankind's relationship with the holy. Codes of purity and impurity, dealing with such far-ranging topics as 'external stains' and 'inner remorse', represent the physical and 'bodily' side of religious experience and provide the key to the understanding of human orientation to nature, and the structure of society, including even relationships between the sexes. Starting with the Hebrew Bible, a number of articles study some rather neglected passages from both exegetical and cultural-anthropological standpoints. Next, it is shown that the concept of purity is far more central to the New Testament than previously thought. Luke is portrayed as a Jewish-oriented writer. The discussion of purity in Mark is compared with Rabbinical and Qumranic material. Patristic discussions of purity reflect both allegorical and literal interpretations, while rabbinical rulings display a fine sense for detail and realia. Biblical references to illness are interpreted both in Christian and Jewish traditions as a metaphor for immoral behavior. The present collection of studies proceeds far beyond other collections on purity, studying both the medieval and modern periods. Purity rules, in both Christian and Jewish society, do not disappear in the Middle Ages, but become increasingly stronger. Sometimes there appear unexpected and surprising similarities between both societies. Modern society sees a decline in the importance of purity, reflecting a growing ambiguous attitude to the relationship between the body and the holy. A feminist perspective is also provided, examining the intertwined relationship between religion, gender and power. Exegesis, archaeology, liturgy, anthropology and even architecture are all used to study the complex phenomena of purity in their religious and social dimensions from both Christian and Jewish perspectives.
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1 online resource :
9789004421394
9789004114180
Patterns of daily prayer in Second Temple period Judaism /
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In Patterns of Daily Prayer in Second Temple Period Judaism , Jeremy Penner seeks to uncover the historical and social processes that underlie the origins and development of Jewish daily prayer practices, particularly the establishment of set times for daily prayer. Since daily prayer lacks explicit biblical warrant, this book seeks to explain how this custom was legitimized as divinely inspired. The importance of daily prayer was understood and experienced within a range of literary and social contexts, and thus different exegetical and etiological strategies develop at this time to legitimize its practice. In some cases daily prayer was coordinated with, and made analogous to, daily cultic sacrifice, in other cases, daily prayer was legitimized by identifying the origins of the practice in sacred scripture. Lastly, in some contexts daily prayer was coordinated with the cycles of celestial bodies in the heavens.
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1 online resource (vii, 259 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004230330 :
0169-9962 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Religion and the Body : modern science and the construction of religious meaning /
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This book reflects on the implications of neurobiology and the scientific worldview on aspects of religious experience, belief, and practice. Just as interest in the neurosciences and related fields has burgeoned in contemporary society, interest in the fields of neuroscience and cognitive studies is also growing within the religious studies academy, and reflection on these shifts is well overdue. How do religious practitioners negotiate the interconnection of science and religion? What can the neurosciences add to scholars' understanding of religion and to how humans construct religious meaning? Chapters address these questions by investigating religious experience and authority, the cultural construction and deconstruction of the body, and cross-cultural appropriations of the body.
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1 online resource (285 pages) :
9789004225343 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The scrolls and biblical traditions : proceedings of the seventh meeting of the IOQS in Helsinki /
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Recent Dead Sea Scrolls research pays much attention to the question which texts were seen as scriptures, in which forms scriptures as well as scriptural traditions were transmitted, how the scrolls can illuminate the gradual move from authoritative scriptural texts to canon, and which different kinds of scriptural interpretation are attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This volume contains twelve essays read at the seventh meeting of the International Organization for Qumran Studies that address these questions either broadly, or in relation to specific texts.
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Description based upon print version of record. :
1 online resource (viii, 275 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004231665 :
0169-9962 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Hebrews in contexts /
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Scholars of Hebrews have repeatedly echoed the almost proverbial saying that the book appears to its reader as a "Melchizedekian being without genealogy". For such scholars the aphorism identified prominent traits of Hebrews, its enigma, its otherness, its marginality. Although Franz Overbeck might unintentionally have stimulated such correlations, they do not represent what his dictum originally meant. Writing during the high noon of historicism in 1880, Overbeck lamented a lack of historical context, one that he had deduced on the basis of flawed presuppositions of the ideological frameworks prevalent of his time. His assertion made an impact, and consequently Hebrews was not only "othered" within New Testament scholarship, its context was neglected and by some, even judged as irrelevant altogether. Understandably, the neglect created a deficit keenly felt by more recent scholarship, which has developed a particular interest in Hebrews' contexts. Hebrews in Contexts , edited by Gabriella Gelardini and Harold W. Attridge, is an expression of this interest. It gathers authors who explore extensively on Hebrews' relations to other early traditions and texts (Jewish, Hellenistic, and Roman) in order to map Hebrews' historical, cultural, and religious identity in greater, and perhaps surprising detail.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004311695 :
1871-6636 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
A Collated and Critical Study of the Xiang'er Commentary to the Laozi /
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This work is a translation of the Xiang'er commentary to the Daodejing and Jao Tsung-i's (1917-2018) supplemental notes and analysis. Jao Tsung-i offers a historically and hermeneutically rich study of the Xiang'er Commentary , discovered in the Mogao caves at Dunhuang in the final years of the Qing Dynasty, and its author Zhang Daoling. Opening a new and fascinating window into the early reception of the Daodejing , Jao Tsung-i also uncovers the important influence texts such as the Scripture of Great Peace (Taiping jing) had on Celestial Masters Daoism and the construction of the Xiang'er commentary .
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1 online resource (318 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004697768
Authoritative texts and reception history : aspects and approaches /
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Reception history has emerged over the last decades as a rapidly growing domain of research, entertaining a notable methodological diversity. Authoritative Texts and Reception History samples that diversity, offering a collection of essay that discuss various reception-historical issues, from a plurality of perspectives, across several fields: Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Pseudepigrapha and the Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament, early and late-antique Christianity. While furthering specific discussions in their specific fields, the contributions included here-authored by both established and emerging scholars-illustrate just how wide the umbrella of 'reception history' can be, and the varied range of topics, concerns and approaches it can accommodate.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004334960 :
0928-0731 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
"The Teaching of These Words": Intertextuality, Social Identity, and Early Christianity : Essays in Honor of Clayton N. Jefford /
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What does it mean for a group to speak of its identity and, in contrast, to speak about the "other"? As with all groups, early Christian communities underwent a process of identity formation, and in this process, intertextuality played a role. The choice of biblical texts and imageries, their reception and adaptation, affected how early Christian communities perceived themselves. Conversely, how they perceived themselves affected which texts they were drawn to and how they read and received them. The contributors to this volume examine how early Christian authors used Scripture and related texts and, in turn, how those texts shaped the identity of their communities.
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1 online resource (387 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004690097
Is there a text in this cave? : studies in the textuality of the Dead Sea Scrolls in honour of George J. Brooke /
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This volume is offered as a tribute to George Brooke to mark his sixty-fifth birthday. It has been conceived as a coherent contribution to the question of textuality in the Dead Sea Scrolls explored from a wide range of perspectives. These include material aspects of the texts, performance, reception, classification, scribal culture, composition, reworking, form and genre, and the issue of the extent to which any of the texts relate (to) social realities in the Second Temple period. Almost every contribution engages with Brooke's own remarkably wide-ranging, incisive, and innovative research on the Scrolls. The twenty-eight contributors are colleagues and students of the honouree and include leading scholars alongside promising new voices from across the field.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004344532 :
0169-9962 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Narrative Hermeneutics, History, and Rhetoric : A Festschrift for David P. Moessner /
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David P. Moessner has pioneered the study of early Christian narrative both through the investigation of the principles and methods of good storytelling outlined by ancient authors, and through the demonstration that Christians, especially the author of Luke-Acts, used these principles and methods in crafting their own stories. The contributors to this volume recognize Moessner's enormously valuable research and warm collegiality with twenty-one essays on narrative hermeneutics, characterization, genre, intertextuality, and reception history. Several focus fittingly on Luke and Acts, while others press the implications of Moessner's work for comprehension of the wider world of Jewish, Christian, and Greco-Roman storytelling.
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1 online resource (600 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004702004
How Heaven Works : The Collective Shamanic Journeys of Phạm Công Tắc and the Syncretic Afterworld of Caodaism /
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In 1948, Vietnam's great 20th Century mystic Phạm Công Tắc (1890-1959) began a series of sermons making Caodaism's claims to universal salvation the clearest. In only two decades, Caodaism had stamped its fast-growing presence on the nation. With potent creative and poetic skill Phạm Công Tắc invited his co-religionists to take a shamanic journey with him to examine the heavens and literally see how they would be saved. The 35 sermons translated here are provided with a commentary and extensive introduction by Hartney. How Heaven Works is a fascinating insight into the deep connection between shamanic atmosphere, literature, and Modern syncretic concepts of salvation. See Less
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1 online resource (385 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004697935
Hajj Travelogues : Texts and Contexts from the 12th Century until 1950 /
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In Hajj Travelogues: Texts and Contexts from the 12th Century until 1950 Richard van Leeuwen maps the corpus of hajj accounts from the Muslim world and Europe. The work outlines the main issues in a field of study which has largely been neglected. A large number of hajj travelogues are described as a textual type integrating religious discourse into the form of the journey. Special attention is given to their intertextual embedding in the broader discursive tradition of the hajj. Since the corpus is seen as dynamic and responsive to historical developments, the texts are situated in their historical context and the subsequent phases of globalisation. It is shown how in travelogues forms of religious subjectivity are constructed and expressed.
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1 online resource (900 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004514034
Dreaming and Self-Cultivation in China, 300 BCE-800 CE /
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Practitioners of any of the paths of self-cultivation available in ancient and medieval China engaged daily in practices meant to bring their bodies and minds under firm control. They took on regimens to discipline their comportment, speech, breathing, diet, senses, desires, sexuality, even their dreams. Yet, compared with waking life, dreams are incongruous, unpredictable-in a word, strange. How, then, did these regimes of self-fashioning grapple with dreaming, a lawless yet ubiquitous domain of individual experience? In Dreaming and Self-Cultivation in China, 300 BCE-800 CE , Robert Ford Campany examines how dreaming was addressed in texts produced and circulated by practitioners of Daoist, Buddhist, Confucian, and other self-cultivational disciplines. Working through a wide range of scriptures, essays, treatises, biographies, commentaries, fictive dialogues, diary records, interpretive keys, and ritual instructions, Campany uncovers a set of discrete paradigms by which dreams were viewed and responded to by practitioners. He shows how these paradigms underlay texts of diverse religious and ideological persuasions that are usually treated in mutual isolation. The result is a provocative meditation on the relationship between individuals' nocturnal experiences and one culture's persistent attempts to discipline, interpret, and incorporate them into waking practice. See Less
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Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9780674293724
9781684176793
The Exegetical and the Ethical : The Bible and the Academy in the Public Square. Essays for the Occasion of Professor John Barton's 70th Birthday /
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Exegesis has ethical dimensions. This is the case for the Bible, which has a foundational status in traditional perspectives that is simultaneously contested in the modern world. This innovative essay collection, largely about Hebrew Bible/Old Testament texts, is written by an international team - all Doktorkinder of a pioneer in this area, Professor John Barton, whose 70th birthday this volume celebrates. With interdisciplinary angles, the essays highlight the roles and responsibilities of the biblical scholar, often located professionally between religious and secular domains. This reflects a broader reality: all readers of texts are engaged ethically in the public square of ideas.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004505490
9789004505483
Reimaging Zen in a Secular Age : Charles Taylor and Zen Buddhism in the West /
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In Reimagining Zen in a Secular Age André van der Braak offers an account of the exciting but also problematic encounter between enchanted Japanese Zen Buddhism and secular Western modernity over the past century, using Charles Taylor's magnum opus A Secular Age as an interpretative lens. As the tenuous compromises of various forms of "Zen modernism" are breaking down today, new imaginings of Zen are urgently needed that go beyond both a Romantic mystical Zen and a secular "mindfulness" Zen. As a Zen scholar-practitioner, André van der Braak shows that the Zen philosophy of the 13th century Zen master Dōgen offers much resources for new hermeneutical, embodied, non-instrumental and communal approaches to contemporary Zen theory and practice in the West.
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1 online resource. :
9789004435087
9789004435070
Images of rebirt h cognitive poetics and transformational soteriology in the Gospel of Philip and the Exegesis on the Soul /
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This book offers fresh readings of the Gospel of Philip (NHC II.3) and the Exegesis on the Soul (NHC II.6) from new theoretical and historical perspectives. Eschewing the category of "Gnosticism" and challenging common categorisations, the book analyses the preserved Coptic texts as coherent Christian compositions contemporary with the production and use of the Nag Hammadi Codices. A methodological framework based on Cognitive Poetics is outlined and applied to illuminate how the texts present a soteriology of transformation through religious rituals and practices using complex conceptual and intertextual blends with important polemical and paraenetic functions. The analysis highlights the use of metaphors and allusions in (re-)interpretations of authoritative Scripture, ritual and dogma. Complete Coptic texts and translations are included.
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Appendix contains the texts of the Exegesis on the Soul and the Gospel of Philip in Coptic, with English translations on facing pages.
Revised version of the author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Bergen, 2007. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (pages 541-576) and index. :
9789004216501 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Religious Identity and the Problem of Historical Foundation : The Foundational Character of Authoritative Sources in the History of Christianity and Judaism /
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The essays collected in this book deal with the question how, throughout the history of Christianity, Christian communities have tried to construct their identity by anchoring their views in authoritative and normative sources. The main focus is upon the problem of historical foundation through textual traditions but other authoritative sources ( role of religious leaders; ritual traditions) are taken into consideration as well. The book takes as its point of departure the fact that with the rise of modernity the former dependence of western church and society on authoritative sources was called into question. Ever since, appeal to such sources is no longer self-evident; at times it is even regarded as problematic. Based on this radical change brought about by modernity, the book is divided in two main parts. The first part deals with the question how Christian churches and confessions ( Roman-Catholic and Protestant) confronted modernity and which role was played by authoritative sources in the tradition to the modern era. Special attention will be paid to the way in which Judaism reacted to many of the same impulses, both societal and religious ones. The second part deals with the premodern period, from early Christianity to the post-Reformation era, and focuses on the role authoritative traditions, textual or otherwise, have played in providing various Christian communities with a relative stable identity. The aim of the book is to elucidate processes resulting in the formation of authoritative traditions as well as the effects of these traditions on the identity of Christian and Jewish communities. In addition, the book attempts to clarify the various ways in which Christian and Jewish communities have reacted to the growing suspicion authoritative traditions aroused in the western world since the rise of modernity.
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1 online resource :
9789047412830
9789004130210